Back in my jaded days of audiophilia I can remember clearly discounting the iPod as any serious means by which to listen to music. Sure, they were convenient and sure you could put a lot of songs on them but at what price. I knew the answer as I had heard music ripped to the mp3 format with even more jaded ears and pronounced them unfit. Done, game over. It’s ok for kids but…I have since lightened up quite a bit but I am still not willing to compromise too much on certain things and sound quality is one of them.I finally bowed to the iPod phenomena only because I was given the ability to control the quality of the format I used to store my music. I bought the 160 GB iPod Classic and ripped my CD collection to ...

You can blame or thank Apple, because the iPod and iPhone have created a worldwide demand for in-ear headphones. There are hundreds of ear-bud phones and their ilk on the market, but few are engineered to produce audiophile-grade sound like Klipsch's Image X10i in-ear headphones. It makes sense that a company whose built its name and reputation for innovative loudspeaker designs would step slightly to the side and put that knowledge into a high-end headset. The Image X10is are Klipsch's lightest in-ear headset, with an in-line microphone and a 3-button remote for taking phone calls and controlling files on iPods, iPod touches and iPhone 3GS. Although the X10is are Apple compatible, the audience for these headsets is the music-loving audiophile with an iPod or iPhone stuffed full of tunes. With a suggested sticker price of $349.99, it's doubtful casual listeners ...

During my last two years of high school, I would come home from class, put on my Koss headphones, take a seat behind my drum set and play along to music for about an hour. I played loud and needed the music equally so to hear above my own din. After every session I was left with a bit of buzzing in my ears that, fortunately, has yet to cause any permanent damage. But those couple of years spent learning Neil Peart's licks left me with little love for headphones. It seemed more like I was surviving the music rather than enjoying it, and have since never found headphones comfortable or pleasant to listen to. The worst for me have been the “ear-bud” variety that now pervades the market thanks to the astonishing success of Apple's iPod. Most have painful ...

Introduction
Like many of you, I have a plethora of electronic gear that I carry around. I typically have a cell phone, Blackberry, iPod and laptop with me on most days. Despite my efforts to protect all of my equipment from drops and other damage, I don’t think a week goes by without something hitting the deck. Otterbox provides a whole slew of cases to protect your gear, which range in price from approximately $10 to $200 dollars. The majority of Otterbox cases are made specifically for the product being protected. A perusal of their online catalogue shows that most of today’s popular devices are covered. In addition to the custom fit cases, Otterbox also offers general use cases in a variety of sizes.
Two of Otterbox’s more popular lines are the Defender and Armor series.
The Defender series offers less protection ...

Introduction
It
is not often that a product comes along that can either make a complex
process one button simple or provide the tweaker with nearly unlimited
adjustments in the pursuit of perfect sound but the Velodyne SMS-1 does
just that. A couple of years ago Velodyne launched their Digital Drive
series of subwoofers which included a digital signal processor,
microphone, parametric equalizer and digital servo controlled
subwoofer. The Digital Drive subwoofers received rave reviews including
from AVRev.com’s own Christopher Zell.
The
Velodyne SMS-1 at $749 incorporates many of the features of the Digital
Drive series, except of course the servo controlled subwoofer. The
Subwoofer Management System features a full suite of controls housed in
a svelte 1 rack unit high black box. The unit itself measures 2 inches
high by 16.5 inches wide by 6.5 inches deep and weighs 17 pounds and is
rack mountable. The front panel features an LCD in the center and ...